


Psychogenesis

by JoAsakura



Series: Sunbreaker: The Book of Mouse [5]
Category: Destiny (Video Games)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-19
Updated: 2019-01-19
Packaged: 2019-10-12 19:19:09
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,761
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17473466
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/JoAsakura/pseuds/JoAsakura





	Psychogenesis

_1/Monachopsis_

He’s been sprawled on a hillock overlooking the Dreaming City, staring up at the blight-mottled opalescent sky for the last four hours. The last dose of queensfoil he took is still sitting, sour and squirming, in his stomach, and Mouse can hear the blades of grass whispering amongst themselves. Sometimes, the sniper rifle lying next to him whispers to them as well.  

Shuro Chi can call it "walking between worlds" all she wants, but he feels like he's losing his mind while the Ascendant plane in his veins scratches at the door to the one the Reef is half-engulfed by.

Periodically, the same Taken shambles past and he absently shoots it in the head, the air popping softly as it rushes in to fill the void. At least he _thinks_ it's the same one. Petra's been feeding the data Mouse and the others have been taking shifts collecting to Rasputin and Osiris looking for a snag, a change, ANYTHING, in the behaviour of the beings and the land caught in the Curse's three-week loop, anything they might grab ahold of and pull to unravel it.

It's actually kind of hilarious, he thinks. Mithraax, Rasputin, Osiris brooding in his infinite Vex wonderland, Mara opening the gates of the Dreaming City. It's taken a series of almost unfathomable disasters but finally, maybe, the System is seeing the first tiny seedling of unity poking through the debris of over a thousand years of war.

The sidearm kicks in his hand as he blows the Taken's head off for the fortieth time, and Stel abruptly wakes up from his power-down mode to assess. Nearby, the others continue to ignore Mouse and Stellamaris, preferring to throw down in an absolutely pointless beef with a group of very confused and angry Scorn also caught in the loop. He watches them for a few moments, before there's the hum of a sparrow's engine whining closer and Mouse shakes his head. 

“It’s beautiful here,” Mouse starts, splaying his armoured fingers against the sky. “I mean, aside from the curse and the..." he waves his hand absently towards the sound of weaponsfire coming from the nearby cliffside "...that. But I think I hate it. Don't tell Petra."

"Don't say that too loud, they'll revoke your Awoken card," Stel  jokes, resettling on his chest.

Grunting up to sitting, Mouse digs his other hand into the dirt, letting it crumble through his fingers, twinkling with aberrant quartz and mica as Stel takes to the air with an annoyed sound. “This is a paradise brute forced into existence by Mara and her monster.”

“You mean Riven?” Stel tilts with the question, and Mouse snorts.

“That too,” he demurs, dusting off his hand.

Stel zips around to examine the little clod of upturned earth, then turns his little blue face to look up at Mouse. “You know, if you hadn’t left to go back to Earth, the Awoken might have had something else. All those green tunnels in the Shore. That was some of your work,” he said, shell narrowing in thought. “The seeds you helped sow, growing after all those centuries. Biodynamic environments reshaping hostile terrain.”

“Light, did you memorise all of that stuff that Uldren dredged up from the archives?” Mouse teases gently.

“Of course! I’m glad too, considering you flattened that habitat!” Stel sniffs indignantly, then settles against Mouse’s shoulder. “Although, I think you’re nicer now. Old you sounded an awful lot like Asher in some of those records.”

The Taken appears again and Mouse just watches it this time, the grass vibrating nervously in the wake of its footsteps.  Something ticks in the back of his brain, and he yanks off his helmet, scrambling after it while Stellamaris shrieks. The creature stops, as startled as he’s ever seen a Taken, and stares down at the Guardian pulling up clods of soil and crumpled grass.

For a moment, the Taken and Mouse just stare at each other.

“What the hell are you looking at?" The Titan suddenly barks, swatting a hand at it. "Go on, shoo. Don’t you have to go lurk menacingly at some corsairs?” Mouse says, and what had once maybe been a Hive acolyte cocks it’s head, obviously doing some slow math in it’s Dark and Worm-stained brain before abruptly scuttling away from him as fast as it could.

“Mouse?” Stel draws the word out into an _extremely_ judgmental question while Mouse rubs the grass between his fingers. He shoves a blade in his mouth and chews, violet brows flattening as he thinks. The blade of grass is screaming softly between his molars.

“The City is fragile, unstable. It’s not a real ecosystem allowed to evolve for any means, but a dreamland constructed for aesthetics,” he says, wagging another softly-chittering blade at Stel. “Savathûn is going to keep hammering at it through the curse until it breaks unless we find a way to make it a real, growing thing. A forest of thorns between here and the Distributary.”

“What are you thinking?” Stel is terrible at hiding his concern, and it’s one of the things Mouse loves about his Ghost. “Oh. Oh, no. _No_.”

“It’s a place where everything grows,” Mouse holds out his hand to let Stel light there. “But I’m not going to force you to come with me.”

“You’re not going into the Black Garden without me.” Stel mutters, watching as the Taken Mouse spared promptly gets its head blown off by a passing Hunter. “This is going to be terrible.”

 

_2/Mimeomia_

Habitat One is leaking atmo like a wheezing calliope and it’s getting worse by the second as the cometary debris batters the Hulls with the frantic beat of a drummer at war.

If everything had gone as Mara planned, the Hulls would have survived the wormhole back with minimal damage. But the surface-fired missiles, the mis-timing of the jump... Almost a third of Mara's one-way "expedition" hadn't made it through. They had no way of knowing if they were dead, or safe but forever stuck in the Distributary, but they did know that it was one third of their brainpower, one third of their planned resources.

It meant everyone wearing a lot more hats.

(And so Bevan Tar had learned everything he could to pick up the slack. Rushed refreshers in emergency medicine, engineering, construction. Doing delicate electronic surgery with the equivalent of an instructional video playing in the corner of his vision while he worked on parts of the ships he hadn't even known existed. He hadn’t slept more than an hour a night for months, but it was what was expected of him. It was what was _necessary_.

He was so tired he was starting to hallucinate, and his mouth was dry with the taste of grass and dirt in the back of it

But now, half-out of his mind with exhaustion like the others, he was part of a team checking the seals on their suits, hoping he remembered how to weld.

He hadn’t welded anything in a thousand years. )

There is a quick on his arm and he freezes in mid-motion, Uldren’s golden eyes fixed hard on him. The scout's blue skin was almost as purple as Bevan's in the red emergency lighting. “Mara’s pulling the evacuation back to Hull Two, you need to get to her now.”

“Oh! Do you know how to fix a burned out atmospheric recycler and not blow yourself up with a plasma welder from the oxygenated vent gas? Because that's what I do, Uldren,  I'M SUPPOSED TO FIX EVERYTHING! _SO, GO RIGHT AHEAD!_ Because if you don’t, then we’re all dead in under an hour,” Bevan snaps, jaw twitching underneath his unshaven scruff. Uldren just lifts an eyebrow, and Bevan sags, exhausted against him in the flashing red lights. “Stars, I'm sorry, that was…”

“Shh, It's ok. And... no.” Uldren pushes the unruly violet strands out of Bevan’s face and then gently cups his cheek, drawing his face up. The kiss is brief, but Uldren holds their foreheads touching for a moment longer. “Look. I’m not going to let you get killed out there. I know you're tired. I may not be able to fix things like you, you insufferable pain in the ass, but I can at least keep the shields running,” Uldren pauses and Bevan straightens. “I can protect you, love, that's what _I_ do.”

“Well, then. I’ll be counting on it,” Bevan grins wearily as the suit’s faceplate slides shut. "Don't let me die."

 

_3/Catopris_

The clod of earth from the Dreaming City sat in a secure engram in his pack while Mouse dropped his hardsuit in the repair cubby. It still smelled like the decon particles Zavala was insisting on for any Guardian coming back from the reef. As if the Curse were a pathogen versus some half-mystical paracausal bullshit. Petra had given him a copy of every bit of info the Awoken had on the Black Garden and he had a long night of reading it, on top of all the recorded Guardian encounters with it.

"I'm going to order pIzza buns for you," Stel said, primly gliding past him. "And you need to lie down. You look awful."

"Queensfoil is the devil," Mouse grunted, padding over to his veranda. "Mushrooms please. I don't care what else."

It was winter cold, but he opened the door, and let the cold air wash over him, with the smell of the City on it. The city never felt like home, any more than any other place had, but the familiarity was comforting. He could see the smoke rising from the plaza where the Iron Banner burned, and felt the tug of a small, unasked for smile. "What do you think about inviting the old wolf over for dinner?"

"Do you want me to ping Stark?" Stel answers from inside. "I'm sure all Saladin is doing tonight is brooding with a side of arguing with Shaxx about Crucible standards."

"Yeah, that would be..." Mouse paused, motion from the courtyard below catching his eye. There was a flicker, not-light, not-dark, the glimmer of ascendance and he rubbed his eyes, wondering if he was still feeling the hit of the queensfoil. The motion paused, transparent as an echo, and for one brief moment, Mouse saw a glint of luminous green in a violet shadow looking straight back at him.

He blinked hard and it was gone.

His mouth still tasted like dirt. "No mushrooms, get the one with the berries," he mumbled, staring at the space where nothing resided.

 


End file.
